Extracting Happiness

Tuesday, February 12, 2013

Want to know a secret? I think kissing is perfect. When you see someone kiss, you can't help but smile. Or at least I can't.
An infant open-mouth kissing your cheek (more like eating it!)
A reunion with a best friend where the hug and the kiss get smashed into one beautiful moment of love
A couple at a party laughing with friends and he leans over and kisses her temple
The sweetness of a kiss on the cheek as two people meet in the street
The tenderness when a parent kisses their grown child and all you can see in that moment is how that grown child will never fully be grown at all in their parent's heart. Always small, always vulnerable, always worth protecting, always theirs
Deep kisses between lovers
A million tiny kisses all over

It is a perfect expression of love. When you simply cannot put into words the depths of what you are feeling.

Enjoy some kissing today, loves. Here is something to get you started.

Monday, February 11, 2013

It is here!! The week of <3 LOVE <3
Valentine's day no longer has a negative connotation for me. It means I get a week to remind people they are loved. To love so hard it hurts. And maybe shower some in hearts and 'I love yous'. Reminders that there is love out there. Maybe not romantic love for some, but love nonetheless.

And so this week I will post one thing about love Monday to Friday. I will start off slow so as to ease you in.

"I don't want to live. I want to love first, and live incidentally." Zelda Fitzgerald

Wednesday, November 14, 2012

Here I am on day 36 of my 365 days of gratitude. It started off really well. I was actually finding it difficult to pick ONE moment from the day to express my gratitude for. It was lovely and it made me realize that I am a very lucky girl. But with ups come downs and in the past little bit there has been some struggle to find my gratitude statements. Take yesterday for example:

"#gratitude day 36: not going to lie, today was a rough one, but at least I made it through! #tomorrowisanewday #ifigotobednowitsover"

I am learning my ebbs and flows, I am learning how the moon affects them, I am learning that I am terribly vulnerable and I am learning to appreciate the little victories like making it through a shitty day/week/month.

Today is coming to a close, and I'm not going to lie, it still wasn't a good day. But tomorrow I will pick myself up and start all over again.

Tuesday, October 9, 2012

I am giving myself a 365 Twitter challenge. I am tweeting one 'gratitude' statement per day. Why? No, not because Oprah told me to, not because I want to be so 'spiritual, man', not because I want to project myself as better than anyone or more connected. The real reason was seeing all the lovely Facebook and Twitter updates of thankfulness over the Canadian Thanksgiving Day weekend. It was tremendous, my heart was full, and I could see that people truly felt lucky and thankful for what they have in their lives (albeit very different for person to person.) It made me realize how my mood changes when I see positivity and messages with kindness behind them. And then I thought about it a little further, these messages were so abundant around this weekend, they are abundant around the Holiday season, they are abundant around births, deaths, and anniversaries. And that is so lovely and so beautiful. The type of soulfulness that surrounds these special days has absolutely no reason not to be a part of everyday. So I decided to start small. Gratitude in 140 characters or less once a day for one year.

I know that I have it good. I know my 'problems' are completely inconceivable to someone living in a developing nation, or someone living below the poverty level here in the 'developed' world. But I have those days where I want to go to bed and stay curled up for at least a month, where I think my life can't get any worse, where I throw myself a badass party full of pity. I wouldn't be human if I didn't have these days. In general I do think I am good at expressing gratitude, but I am by no means great at it, and there is no reason I should be any less than exceptional at showing how thankful I am. And imagine I can turn that into a habit! How different certain situations will become! So here goes. Tuesday, October 9, 2012 to Tuesday, October 8, 2013 my goal is to tweet gratitude once a day. Let's see where this takes me!

EDIT: I forgot to include my Twitter name in case you want to check it out! You can find me at @SelbyAllison on the Twitter!

Wednesday, July 11, 2012

I would describe myself as a hopeful individual. I live by such quotes as:

"If others think I am nuts, naive, gullible, and not living in the real world, that's all right too...I'll gladly stay in what some have called my fictitious world, my happy and peaceful world, a world full of signs of hope." - Ward Foley
I believe that people are good. I believe that we can all do what it takes to change our world. Change someone's life. Change our own outcome.

I believe in love. I believe in good. I believe in happiness. I believe in people.

I support the underdog. I give people the benefit of the doubt. I believe people are telling me the truth.

I believe that some people are handed a shitty hand. I believe that circumstance can make people act in certain ways. I believe that we, as a society, ostracize people who do not fit into our norm.

I believe that life is not fair to many. I believe that we take so much for granted. I believe that many cannot recover from the hardships they've been dealt.

I am hopeful that all of this might work out in the end. I am hopeful that good will prevail. I am hopeful that simple act or thought can change a life.

I hope that people learn to love. Unconditionally. With all their heart. Fiercely.

Thursday, June 21, 2012

Some recent conversations with some friends have had me scouring feminist websites and blogs. There is something that I love about processes like this: I go in search of one thing and come out with a completely different, but equally as important discovery. I went in search about articles about whether or not men can be feminists and I ended up reading this: How to Tell a True Story. It was so very interesting and brought up an awful lot of thought and emotion on my part. But then it happened again. I was reading this and I found myself completely involved in the tiniest, smallest, seemingly fairly meaningless part of the work which was:

"While training to be a yoga teacher, I learned to be careful about hip opening poses. “People store memories in their hips,” my teacher said. “Especially women. Trauma. Be gentle, and don’t be surprised if some students start crying.”"

I continued reading the entire story, but I emailed myself that quote and found myself reading it over and over again and I'm not really sure why. But it's so true.

It's true for me in yoga class, it's true for me when I'm just stretching on my own, it was true for me in ballet, and it's true for me now with burlesque too. When I am in an uncomfortable situation I turn my toes in a little and this closes my hips. When I am feeling highly emotionally charged I bring my knees up and close my hips off to the world. When I am sick or really tired I curl up on my side leaving no access to my hips.

And then something made sense to me: I stopped ballet and modern while I was at a very intense and serious level due to hip injuries, stress fractures in both. And though having to relearn how to define myself was difficult enough, I now wonder how the fact that the injury was in an incredibly vulnerable part of my body affected that process.

And why wouldn't your hips (especially for women) be place of great emotion?! Hips-close to gut-close to pelvis-close to pubic bone-close to ovaries-close to uterus-close to vagina-close to vulva. We push memories down, we push trauma down, we push emotion down down down because it is BAD to be emotional. You are weak if you show vulnerability in any way. And as a woman, (and this is just me personally), I don't think of 'down' as my legs or toes. I think of 'down' as that place inside my tummy. the opposite of the base of my spine. And what surrounds that? My hips.

Pretty interesting thing to come out of looking around for feminist vs. pro-feminist men!

Tuesday, May 22, 2012

I turned 28 last week. I wasn't at all excited about it. I'm usually really good with birthdays. In fact I love them. A day where you get to be the Prince or Princess and parade around like all eyes are on you! I love other people's birthdays, coming up with a special way to make them smile and feel ever so loved. It's the day where on facebook you look like a rockstar because all those people that you never talk to post something on your wall, albeit completely generic. But this year I just wanted it to come and go. I couldn't put in to words why I wanted my birthday to just pass by without notice, but I did. Everytime I said, "I just feel like I'm turning 28, and what do I have to show for it?!?" People would respond with such things as "you're a doula, you found a job at a not-for-profit that you love, you have friends surrounding you and loving you, you have a family that you adore and they adore you in return, your burlesque habbit has become more of a sexy addiction!! What don't you have to celebrate!"

And the truth is, they're all right. But I found all the negatives, "yeah, BUT I don't my own family (or even the slightest hint it may happen soon), I am not making enough money, burlesque isn't moving fast enough for me" and the list went on and on. Basically in my eyes I'm not successful. Then something happened.

This:

Birthday party dinner courtesy of Krissie

And This:

Spent the day at the zoo with my bff

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and This and this:

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From my sister

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From my parents

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﻿﻿﻿﻿﻿﻿ ﻿﻿﻿And This:

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SPOILED!!

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And THIS!:

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A week before my birthday, my best friend from Lethbridge came into town and planned an entire celebration. We had hotdog pizza (my fave as a kid!) Wildrose Wraspberry beer, party hats, cake and laughter. The next day we went out for breaky and then she took me to the zoo and we made supper together. And she left and I felt loved.

I spent the week watching my cousins (which I'll write about in a different post because it deserves a whole post unto it's own) and each morning I was greated with 3 beautiful smiles and hugs and kisses. They went down to the German bakery and got me pasteries. They were sad when I left. They let me know they love me.

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I got flowers at work from my sister and my parent's. A volunteer brought me flowers for me. My boss put princess balloons on my desk. There was a card signed by everyone from work. The girls at work got me moustache magnets!! Everyone was kind. I left work smiling. People celebrated me and I felt loved.

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I came home Sunday and my parent's were here and they had a celebration planned for me. Steak for supper, pateries for desert. Presents, wine, amazing company and surrounded by my family. We played Kinect all night and laughed and laughed and laughed. We woke up and had coffee and did the crossword puzzle, went out for lunch and then they headed home. And before they left they both told me how happy they are I was born. 5 minutes after they left I got a text from my dad saying they miss both of us already. And I knew I am loved.

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And so, what I learned for my 28th birthday is that maybe I'm not where I imagined I'd be at 28, but it isn't so bad. I have incredible amounts of love in my life. I am loved beyond measure. And today that is enough for me.

Thank you to my mama and papa, to my wonderful sister, to Krissie, Ashley, Jenny, Kimmy, Linds, and the kids for filling me up with love. To each person who took a moment out of their day to make me feel special.